The Great Andromeda Galaxy (also known as Messier 31 - M31 for short) is in a very favorable position for imaging this time of year. M31 is about 2.2 million light years from Earth. Even so, if you know where to look, it is visible to the naked eye as a hazy patch of light. The light captured in the attached image left the galaxy over 2.2 million years ago!

M31 is the largest neighboring galaxy to the Milky Way - our own galaxy. NGC221 (also designated as M32) is its superimposed elliptical companion and NGC 205 is a slightly more distant elliptical galaxy. NGC206, which is embedded within the spiral arms of M31 and located about the 8 oclock position in this image, is a rich star forming region with lots of new blue stars.

This is one of the most spectacular galaxies visible from Earths northern hemisphere (other than the Milky Way, of course) and one of my very favorite deep sky objects.

This image was processed with an emphasis on the dark dust lanes that help define the spiral arms of this galaxy.

The image consists of a stack of 16 30 second exposures captured with a Takahashi Epsilon 130D Astrograph equipped with a QHY-183C single shot color CCD camera. Total integration time was only 8 minutes.